Is It Too Soon For An Expansion?
An interesting thread got a reply from Vaneras over at the EU Battle.net forums. Could an expansion announcement land soon? Even if it doesn't the post has some good points about showing things before a game comes out and having said things in release.

For me, it depends on what the expansion offers.
This is a very sensible stance to take I think, especially for those who are sceptical about the expansion and the future of Diablo III. Reading reviews and viewing gameplay footage and streams beforehand should be a good help for evaluating whether or not the expansion will be to your liking.

It is not a bad idea to wait and see before making your decision, especially since the contents of the expansions have yet to be revealed :-)

You advise to wait and see before making a decision... it's not going to be the same case scenario where we are shown trailers of lots of excellent things and exciting content, only to have lots of it removed on release?
I do not think that it will be the same case scenario at all if those people who are concerned or sceptical about the expansion wait until after it has been released before they make their decision.

In regards to your concern about removed content - I can agree that it is unfortunate when this happens; it is a sucky feeling indeed when content you were personally looking forward to doesn’t happen as originally announced. It is impossible for me to predict if the developers will feel it necessary to remove or postpone content for one reason or another after we have already shown it in previews or sneak-peaks, but I am confident that we will do our best to accurately show you guys what the expansion is about and how it plays before it is released.

In general though, the impressions and reviews of any game or expansion are typically most accurate after release, which is due to the fact that a greater number of people get their hands on them to do appraisals or gameplay videos and streams. So again, if you are concerned about the Diablo III expansion, if you are not sure that it will be to your liking, then the logical option would be to wait and see how it plays out before deciding if you will be getting it or not :-)

Auction House Delays
We are investigating an issue where auction house transactions are taking 5-10 days longer than normal and made a post about it in the Technical Support forums that you can find here. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible, and should mention that we haven’t seen any cases in which transactions are permanently lost. (Official Forums)

If we were to change the droprates, we would first make an announcement about it - just like we have done in the past whenever there we made changes of this nature.

First of all, love the meme. Did you make that?
I did indeed. I think Bad Luck Brian is the perfect person to illustrate the nature of RNG ;-)

Second of all, have you noticed all those conspiracy theory threads there has been the last couple of months?- A lot of people won't believe you when you say that you would make an announcement before nerfing something :-P
I have noticed those threads indeed, and I have also noticed the replies in those very threads from people who have had good luck with their drops. :-) (Official Forums)

Monster Power on New Characters
I’ve talked with players in several different Diablo III communities about how they level new characters and found that most of them tend to prefer one of two tactics. 1) For a number of players, Monster Power 10 seems to be the way to go when leveling by just playing through the game, but (as you pointed out) that leads to a much slower pace than farming key areas. 2) There’re also players who farm specific high-density locations, but they tend to tone down Monster Power to whatever they can handle while still one-shotting most of the monsters. I’m sure plenty of players do a little bit of both depending on the situation, too.

I prefer a hybrid of the two, but will lean towards faster leveling depending on the last time I leveled the class I'm playing. (Official Forums)

Fastest Demonic Essence Farming Route
Archon Inferno spent a good deal of time on the PTR, testing out the best places to farm Demonic Essences. Check the video below for his input!

At this point, ofc they would try to rush the release of the first expansion, I doubt that more than 500k players play this shitty game, they get far less profit from the RMAH as they would like. What they will do is that soon they stop adding bigger revamps (not that they were so ample about it thus far) to this game, and save all their gunpowder to the first expansion. Financially, an expansion is a lot bigger deal than continous patching up to the point where the game is playable again.
So they could just keep patching the game till it becomes decent, or make the game decent with the release of an expansion, which would yet again, net them 60$ per sold copy.
It's not a question, they choose the latter...
And it could work. There is soooo much they left out of this game (deliberately or not) and can be put into the expansion. There are still many of us who are still hoping, and even though seeing Blizz creating a below average game was a shock to us all, we would give them one more chance, and most of us would still buy that expansion.

...
And it could work. There is soooo much they left out of this game (deliberately or not) and can be put into the expansion. There are still many of us who are still hoping, and even though seeing Blizz creating a below average game was a shock to us all, we would give them one more chance, and most of us would still buy that expansion.

Hope? Hope...

In my universe, Rakanoth killed her. Now, demons control this plane and i am forced to walk the Path of Exile...